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Christine has over 25 years of marketing experience, and is a recognized thought leader, speaker and author with expertise in corporate strategy, CX and emerging technologies. She has been published in BusinessWeek, Forbes, Huffington Post and has been quoted in several books on marketing and technology. Christine has keynoted and spoken at over 30 conferences on CX and business strategy.

She has directly contributed to creating over $2.7B in value for clients like Oracle, Great Place to Work Institute, Santa Clara University, PayScale, Selligent, New Pig Corporation, Prime Therapeutics, Lithium and McKesson.

Recognized by SDL as a CX Master in 2015, and one of three “B2B Luminary” by MarketingProfs in 2013, she was also Silicon Valley’s Most Influential Women in 2010 as established by Silicon Valley Business Journal.

With stints as EVP Marketing, Business Development & Alliances at Egenera, CMO at Ariba, she has also held management positions with SAP, Oracle and PriceWaterhouse. She holds a Masters in Business Administration from Florida Atlantic University and a Doctorate from Golden Gate University.

With Artificial Intelligence (AI) already proving its worth to adopters, it’s not surprising that an increasing number of companies will implement and leverage AI in 2019. Now, it’s no longer a question of whether AI will take off. Instead, it’s a question of which companies will keep up. Here are five predictions from five influencers on the impact AI will have on businesses in 2019, writes Christine Crandell, President, New Business Strategies.

From retail giants to Silicon Valley startups, a rapidly growing number of companies are embedding AI into their businesses. Even the public has begun to welcome AI into their homes.

With 2018 soon coming to a close, it’s time to start asking what the future holds for AI and how its reach will continue to expand in 2019.

We surveyed a diverse group of industry leaders for answers. Here, we’ll take a look at their insights and learn what AI has to offer in the coming year.

# Prediction 1: Improved Cyber Threat Detection, Will Lassalle

“My prediction for artificial intelligence in 2019 is specific to the 3 million employee shortfall in cybersecurity, where the opportunity exists for artificial intelligence to help automate threat detection and response,” said Will Lassalle, CIO of Lynx Technology Partners and JLS Technology USA.

“This can ease the burden on employees, and potentially help identify threats more efficiently than other software-driven approaches, shrinking the attack surface instead of constantly chasing after malicious activity.”

The numbers support Lassalle’s sentiment — according to Cisco’s 2018 Annual Cybersecurity Report, 32 percent of organizations are “completely reliant” on AI in terms of their security infrastructure.

As AI platforms and tools continue to learn and improve, it wouldn’t be unlikely that 2019 would see those numbers climb even higher.

# Prediction 2: Machine Learning at Scale, Sam Charrington

“Over the past few years, early-adopter enterprises have launched their initial machine learning and AI projects, with many of those efforts recently coming to fruition,” said Sam Charrington, founder of CloudPulse Strategies.

“In 2019 and 2020, these companies start to understand that scaling machine learning in the enterprise requires a different set of skills and technology than successfully delivering individual machine learning models and projects. As a result, we’ll start to see enterprises establish specialist machine learning infrastructure teams and platforms to help reduce the barriers to delivering machine learning at scale.”

Charrington’s predictions are in line with a recent report from Indeed, which discovered that employer demand for AI-related jobs more than doubled between 2016 and 2018.

However, the same report revealed that job-seeker searches for AI-related jobs are beginning to plateau. For leading companies, this means that finding and retaining AI talent in 2019 will be crucial.

# Prediction 3: Next-Gen Virtual Assistants, Evan Kirstel

“It will be the true human-like, natural language-based personal executive assistant that we have been dreaming of (and that Siri, Cortana, Alexa and others have yet to achieve). It may come from Google, Microsoft, IBM Watson or a dozen other startups that are working in this space.”

Kirstel’s forecast isn’t hard to believe: According to Adobe’s 2018 State of Voice Assistants report, an astonishing 48 percent of consumers will own a smart speaker after the 2018 holiday season, illustrating the demand for this technology already.

Knowing that the market for voice assistants is already so strong, the race is on for a new and even more advanced option than we have today.

# Prediction 4: Adoption Across the Board, Isaac Sacolick

“Artificial intelligence and machine learning will increase adoption in 2019 in several ways,” said Isaac Sacolick, president and CIO of StarCIO. “Companies leading the adoption curve will invest more in reinforcement learning, address bias gaps in their data sets, and look to make their AI algorithms more explainable.”

He added, “Mainstream organizations will take advantage of AI embedded in their strategic platforms such as AI-driven sales forecasting, marketing automation and AIOps. Lastly, public cloud vendors will make their AI offerings easier to use and more scalable for IoT applications.”

Sacolick’s forecast seems to agree with a survey from McKinsey & Company found that nearly half of respondents’ organizations have integrated at least one form of AI into their standard business processes.

The same report also found that companies across a wide array of industries are seeing value in AI, from manufacturing to human resources.

# Prediction 5: AI Solutions Put to the Test, Marshall Choy

“With a multitude of new AI products and services becoming available in 2019, the complex and large requirements of early adopters will truly test and challenge these new technologies,” said Marshall Choy, vice president of product at SambaNova Systems.

“AI is not a product to be bought and sold, but a core enabling technology for driving innovation. Therefore, an AI-driven approach to tackling data management requirements will necessitate a focus on not only individual layers of the technology stack but also in how those layers interact and integrate with each other.”

This prediction’s veracity is reflected in data from McKinsey & Company. Findings revealed that of those companies that have adopted AI, only 15 percent believe they have the right technological infrastructure and architecture in place to support AI systems.

It’s clear that industry leaders don’t expect to see AI slow down anytime soon. Rather, experts anticipate better threat detection, a slew of new jobs, cutting-edge products and widespread adoption. Along with that, AI solutions will no doubt be put to the test in 2019 by the underlying technology that supports them.

With AI already proving its worth to adopters, it’s not surprising that an increasing number of companies will implement and leverage AI in 2019. Now, it’s no longer a question of whether AI will take off. Instead, it’s a question of which companies will keep up.

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